I Wish I Could Tell You That I’m Surviving Without You

I wish I could tell you that I am surviving, that you only enter my thoughts when the lights go out and my feet search for yours beneath the sheets.

I wish I could tell you that long distance relationships get easier with age or experience, but they don’t.

Because my darling, I feel your absence in absolutely everything I do. I search for your face in every crowd despite knowing you won’t be there, and I constantly fight my desire to just lean into you and inhale your scent.

I miss you every second of every day and sometimes I ache for you so intensely, I feel as if I am drowning.

And it’s not even the big moments when I crave you; it is in the small intricate moments of my life that I miss you the most. When I share a joke with my friends and I instantly turn to see your reaction, to catch your eye as a smile spreads across my face because a joke is always funnier when it is shared with you. It’s when I think of something that only you would understand or be amused by and I can’t tell you.

It’s when I’ve had an awful day at work and all I want is to open my door and to see you standing there with that knowing look in your eyes before you pull me into your chest and press your lips to my head. It’s when I am angry and stressed out and need to rant about terrible people and this terrible life and instead I have to text you or call you, when the one thing I want is to run to you. For you to just listen before holding me.

God, I miss being held by you.

It’s like I am constantly followed by this ghost of you; the space beside me feels loaded and sometimes I imagine conversations we would have as I walk to class, when the leaves are changing and our favourite season is upon us. I picture you dancing through the russet leaves and pulling me behind tall trees to press your lips to mine when the world isn’t looking. I spin these worlds in which we are together, where we are firmly in the same place at the same time. When buses and trains and cab rides through stormy weather do not stand between us, when we get to share the same space of pillow, when I get to feel the warmth of your skin against mine and listen to the melody of your heart beat as you find sleep.
I am so tired of counting down the days until I see you stepping on to the train platform, of wishing my days away so I can just be in your arms again.

I hate how much I need you. I hate that even when I am happy, when I am drinking tequila with my friends or sitting on the beach writing in my journal, I still ache for you.

I hate that I am never completely present, that I do not feel whole because part of me will always remain there with you. Because this city, it doesn’t know us yet, our love does not linger in that quirky coffee shop by the ocean or float among the tide. There are no memories of us dancing against the back drop of a starlit night or holding hands on the pier. I can’t recall the time we went for pizza by the docks or drank way too many cocktails at that hipster bar in town. It is completely absent of us, of you and maybe that’s a good thing, maybe that would just hurt me more.

But I need something, because even that hoodie you gave me, it doesn’t smell of you anymore and I’m starting to forget your scent and the sound of your voice. And sometimes I wake at night, when my room is so dark I can’t see my hand in front of my face, and I roll over to the cold of the bed and suddenly remember you’re not there.

And I can’t breathe.

So honey, I’ll never stop counting, of waiting for you to return to me. I will never enjoy my ability to starfish or eat the whole bag of candy to myself. Because everything is better when I’m with you, because you are the best thing.